Israeli general: 5,000 Hezbollah warheads can hit Tel Aviv

Israeli reserve soldiers run during a drill at a military zone near Kibbutz Revivim. (Photo: Reuters – Amir Cohen)

Published Friday, March 29, 2013

Hezbollah has 5,000 warheads that can hit Tel Aviv, which is ten times more than during its 2006 war with Israel, Israeli Commander Major General Eyal Eisenber told Haaretz in an interview published Friday.

The explosives are more accurate and heavier than the rockets at the Lebanon-based group’s disposal during the country’s last war with Israel. Eisenber claimed all 500 of the mostly Iranian-made Fajr and Zelzal rockets were destroyed a few days after battle broke out, hence staving off an attack on the Israeli commercial center.

Over 1,100 Lebanese civilians died in Israeli airstrikes against the country in the 33-day-war, while 43 Israeli civilians died in Hezbollah rocket fire. Around 100 Lebanese militants and soldiers perished, whereas 121 Israeli soldiers died.

As Syria becomes further embroiled in conflict and fighting intensifies on Lebanese border areas, media and officials have been preoccupied with the specter of war soon erupting between Lebanon and its southern neighbor.

Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has repeatedly dismissed the possibility as remote but warns the group is better prepared for battle “than ever before.”

The metropolitan Tel Aviv region “will come under a massive missile barrage. Hezbollah has at its disposal about 5,000 warheads, weighing between 300 and 800 kilograms each,” said Eisenber.“In my estimation, the first days will be extremely difficult. I am preparing for a scenario in which more than a thousand missiles and rockets a day are fired at the civilian rear.”

The officer, who specializes in civilian protection and emergency situations, also claimed that Hezbollah “abandoned the approach of vanquishing us, which guided them in earlier wars, and more recently have adopted an attrition approach,” in which their main targets are civilian areas.

Nasrallah often refers to Israel as a delicate structure that would collapse if only certain targets were hit. He has said that future targets would include power plants and other vital infrastructure.

Last year, Hezbollah sent a surveillance drone that penetrated the Jewish state’s airspace and flew over most of the country. It was shot down near the southern Negev desert.

(Al-Akhbar)

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